Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 And yet today, numerous "all natural" food companies continue to use hidden forms of msg in their foods, hiding them under innocent-sounding ingredients like yeast extract, autolyzed or hydrolyzed proteins (all of which contain msg). Even the companies you've grown to trust in the "natural" food business are engaged in the blatant hiding of msg in their products. Pay special attention to vegetarian food products such as veggie burgers. Read the ingredients on everything you buy and you'll find that the largest "natural" food manufacturers still use hidden msg. |
Ann N. Martin
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 Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
Many humans have allergies to the food enhancer, msg, but did we ever consider our pers could also have a reacrion to msg? Although rare, there have been cases of dogs experiencing severe reactions after ingesting foods that contain this substance. Reactions can occur immediately or up to forty-eight hours after the pet ingests the food enhancer. msg reactions are often misdiagnosed as epileptic seizures. A per could end up on medication for the rest of his or her life because the veterinarian diagnosed rhe problem based on the symptoms. |
| Other ingredients that often contain msg include whey protein, soy protein, soy sauce, carrageenan or vegetable gum, anything fermented, chicken, beef or pork smoke flavorings.
Human food can also be a source of msg. According ro an article by Jeff Gordy on msg, a lot of restaurants may use msg to prepare their food, including McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and many others.5
Clumping Kitty Litter
Clumping kitty litters are supposed to reduce odor and help in absorption but how safe are these products for our cats? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 What the veggie burger manufacturer is doing is using an msg ingredient in a concentrated, refined form that greatly increases the potency and the potential toxicity of the ingredient. In my book, that's not natural.
Claiming msg is natural because free glutamic acid appears in tomatoes is sort of like saying cocaine is natural because it's derived from ingredients found in the coca leaf. Of course, it's all a matter of potency -- you can take a natural plant like coca and drink coca leaf all day long in Peru without any of the dangerous or addictive effects of cocaine. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| And yet today, numerous "all natural" food companies continue to use hidden forms of msg in their foods, hiding them under innocent-sounding ingredients like yeast extract, autolyzed or hydrolyzed proteins (all of which contain msg). Even the companies you've grown to trust in the "natural" food business are engaged in the blatant hiding of msg in their products. Pay special attention to vegetarian food products such as veggie burgers. Read the ingredients on everything you buy and you'll find that the largest "natural" food manufacturers still use hidden msg. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Similarly, yeast extract sounds like a perfect safe food ingredient, too, but it's actually a trick used to hide monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical taste enhancer used to excite the flavors of overly-processed foods) without having to list msg on the label. Lots of ingredients contain hidden msg, and I've written extensively about them on this site. Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden msg.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The idea is to mimic the chemistry and function of monosodium glutamate, or msg, an ingredient that has been classified as an excitotoxin. Most people know to avoid msg because they've been warned about the detrimental effects of this ingredient on the nervous system and especially the dangers to children and infants. But what a lot of natural food makers do is hide this free glutamate in their foods in another innocent-sounding ingredient: Yeast extract. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 So this product, Kitchen Basics, apparently contains msg in an ingredient that they call "natural flavor," and yet right on the box it says "No msg, No Fat, and No Glutens." I think that's a very misleading product, and it's something that people should not purchase.
But at the same time, this Tofu 2 Go didn't have any msg at all. There's no yeast extract, and even after eating an entire package, I suffered no headache at all, indicating that there was no hidden msg in this product. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a second dangerous chemical found in virtually all processed meat products. msg is a dangerous excitotoxin linked to neurological disorders such as migraine headaches, Alzheimer's disease, loss of appetite control, obesity and many other serious health conditions. Manufacturers use msg to add flavor to dead-tasting processed meat products.
Essentially, dead meat products look and taste dead (because they are), so meat companies use the following three ingredients to make them look fresh and taste interesting:
Sodium nitrite makes the meat look red and fresh. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Because I have very high body awareness, I know what an msg headache feels like, and I never get headaches unless it's something that I've eaten. So this product, Kitchen Basics, apparently contains msg in an ingredient that they call "natural flavor," and yet right on the box it says "No msg, No Fat, and No Glutens." I think that's a very misleading product, and it's something that people should not purchase.
But at the same time, this Tofu 2 Go didn't have any msg at all. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| At this point the spokesperson for this veggie burger manufacturer admitted that, yes, their product did contain free glutamic acid, which is another way of saying msg, but that it was from an all-natural source, and that there are other foods like seaweed or tomatoes that have free glutamic acid. To this, I replied that, sure, tomatoes have a very small quantity of naturally occurring free glutamic acid, but that's different. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| This is remarkable because I have purchased and tested foods from many other companies that claimed to be natural, and I have found that they were not natural and have even found that many of them are hiding msg in their foods and not putting it on the label. I'm not going to name names here because the point of this article is to talk about how good Amy's Kitchen is, and why I think you should purchase and consume their products if you're looking for healthy frozen food.
The one complaint I hear about Amy's Kitchen is that their food is relatively expensive. Of course it is. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| I replied by reading their PR person the list of ingredients printed right on their own box (which included autolyzed yeast extract), then I showed them documentation supporting the fact that autolyzed yeast extract always contains msg, and that autolyzed yeast extract is used for only one purpose in manufactured foods: as a chemical taste enhancer. It has no other purpose in the realm of food science. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| Even the companies you've grown to trust in the "natural" food business are engaged in the blatant hiding of msg in their products. Pay special attention to vegetarian food products such as veggie burgers. Read the ingredients on everything you buy and you'll find that the largest "natural" food manufacturers still use hidden msg.
(The newest ingredient to hide msg under is called torula yeast. Watch for it on labels.)
Click here to view our CounterThink cartoon on this topic.
What's the definition of all-natural, anyway? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 They all contain msg.
Mike: Gravy mixes almost always have it, right?
Dr. Blaylock: Yes, they'll put hydrolyzed protein in it. They're selling taste. I mean, that's why a person prefers one restaurant to another. The food tastes better. Then they go home and feel sick and don't understand why.
One of the things that has been noticed about sudden cardiac death is that most that have it, other than athletes, die after eating a meal in a restaurant. I suspect it's because these people have low magnesium. |
| Here's an off-the-wall question: If msg and all its different versions, as well as aspartame, were outlawed tomorrow, what changes would we see in the next five years in terms of public health?
Dr. Blaylock: I think you'd see a significant drop in obesity and metabolic syndrome. You'd see a tremendous drop in certain cancers. You would certainly see a tremendous drop in the neurodegenerative diseases, and all of these diseases that are increasing expeditiously.
The neurodegenerative diseases are just exploding. Things that used to be rare, we're seeing all the time now. |
Ann N. Martin
See book keywords and concepts |
| Human food can also be a source of msg. According ro an article by Jeff Gordy on msg, a lot of restaurants may use msg to prepare their food, including McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and many others.5
Clumping Kitty Litter
Clumping kitty litters are supposed to reduce odor and help in absorption but how safe are these products for our cats? One of the ingredients in these products is sodium bentonite, which makes the litter clump and makes it easier for disposal. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Most people know to avoid msg because they've been warned about the detrimental effects of this ingredient on the nervous system and especially the dangers to children and infants. But what a lot of natural food makers do is hide this free glutamate in their foods in another innocent-sounding ingredient: Yeast extract.
This ingredient is so common in the natural health industry that it's difficult to actually find what I call "clean natural foods" in the frozen food section of any health food store in this country. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Russell Blaylock, who is perhaps the world's foremost authority on msg and other excitotoxins such as aspartame.
Similarly, whole grain corn is a healthful, nutritious food. But when you refined that corn and extract the sugars to make high-fructose corn syrup, you now have a blatantly unnatural ingredient that contributes to obesity and type-II diabetes. Yet the corn associations insist that high-fructose corn syrup is "all natural" because it comes from a plant. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| The average consumer looks at it and goes, "Well, it says that it contains no msg, so it must be okay."
Mike: I find a lot of the vegetarian foods, or so-called health foods, use yeast extracts.
Dr. Blaylock: The worst of the things they're doing are the soy extracts. Soybeans, naturally, have one of the highest glutamate levels of any of the plant products. When you hydrolyze it, you release the glutamate, and the soy protein isolates. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| And if it has yeast extract, or autolyzed yeast extract, or hydrolyzed vegetable protein or any of these other ingredients that actually harbor msg, then it is, in my opinion, a deceptively positioned product, because it claims to be natural but in fact uses highly potent refined extracts that don't occur anywhere near that concentration in nature.
You'll see a much more detailed discussion of all this in my upcoming book, "Grocery Warning," due out shortly. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| So, we are all exposed to those toxins, and then when you add msg and excitotoxins to the food, you tremendously accelerate this toxicity. That's why we're seeing this explosion in neurodegenerative diseases; Alzheimer's and autism and ADD and Parkinson's -- all these things are increasing so enormously because we are exposed to carcinogenic toxicity from all these different things and this huge exposure to excitotoxins, which is the central mechanism.
This is what no one's been able to claim. |
| I don't know how many seizure patients I've gotten off their medicines by just getting them off msg and giving them magnesium. They quit having seizures. They were on maximum dosages of medications and still having seizures. Most neurologists and neurosurgeons that treat seizures are not aware of this.
Mike: It's not profitable to teach people how to avoid these ingredients.
Dr. Blaylock: If you look at the neuroscience literature, you can't pick up an article that's not about excitotoxicity. The hottest topic in neurosciences is glutamate receptors and excitotoxins. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
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 Fats and Cholesterol - The Good, the Bad, and the Healthy Diet"
Article from the Harvard School of Public Health
"Hidden Sources of Free Glutamic Acid (MSG)"
An article about msg in and MSG-labeling on food. Web site also provides other information about food labels and how to decipher the various food-labeling loopholes employed by food manufacturers. |
Byron J. Richards
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 Avoid msg and aspartame.
MSG is a neurotoxin. It damages the structure in the brain that is supposed to be registering the leptin signal, which gives a person a normal full signal from the proper amount of food. Damaging this brain structure makes the person behave like the mouse that makes no leptin and thus has no normal appetite regulation. There is a reason why there are over fifty studies on the MSG-obese rat in the scientific literature. When scientists need to study a fat rat that is not yet diabetic, they feed it msg until the rat's brain is so damaged that it eats itself into obesity. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Those ingredients are msg, yeast extract, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, and other similar ingredients. Warning: watch out for broth products made by Kitchen Basics. They claim their products don't contain msg or yeast extract, but when I tried their product, I experienced a massive "MSG headache" that tells me it contains free glutamic acid that isn't listed on the label. (I'm very sensitive to msg.) The brand of broth I buy is Trade Joe's house brand, which does not contain free glutamic acid. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| Claiming msg is natural because free glutamic acid appears in tomatoes is sort of like saying cocaine is natural because it's derived from ingredients found in the coca leaf. Of course, it's all a matter of potency -- you can take a natural plant like coca and drink coca leaf all day long in Peru without any of the dangerous or addictive effects of cocaine. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| So this product, Kitchen Basics, apparently contains msg in an ingredient that they call "natural flavor," and yet right on the box it says "No msg, No Fat, and No Glutens." I think that's a very misleading product, and it's something that people should not purchase.
But at the same time, this Tofu 2 Go didn't have any msg at all. There's no yeast extract, and even after eating an entire package, I suffered no headache at all, indicating that there was no hidden msg in this product. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| Mike: We've got government health officials telling us mercury is safe and we've got big business telling us both aspartame and msg are safe. It sounds like every poison in the food supply or in organized medicine is perfectly safe.
Dr. Blaylock: We did that with lead. When they first started questioning the safety of lead, the levels they said were safe were just enormously high, and then a mere 10 years later, suddenly we're finding out that lead is toxic at 10 micrograms. In the '60s, they were fighting over the same thing. |
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